Since 2007, Alison Rossiter has collected expired photographic papers from the 19th and early 20th centuries, creating an archive of over 1,800 individual packages that represent the rise and transformation of the photography industry over time. Even in dark storage, each package of paper reacted to conditions – moisture, humidity, physical damage, attacks by mold spores – that manifested in tonal changes when developed. These resulting tones are evidence of the papers’ experience and are taken by the artist to be subject matter. Featured in our viewing room are Rossiter’s abstract, minimalist assemblages composed of rare, expired photographic papers from England, France, Belgium, Germany, and the United States, which the artist processed using photographic chemicals and grouped together to form a chronology of three specific decades of the 20th century. Substance of Density 1918-1948, the artist’s third exhibition at the gallery, is now on view at 245 Tenth Avenue, in New York City, through October 17, 2020.
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Selected Works
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Installation view, Alison Rossiter: Substance of Density 1918-1948, Yossi Milo Gallery, New York
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Gevaert Gevaluxe Velours
The “Stradivarius” of photographic papersIn addition to the assemblages, Substance of Density 1918-1948 includes three prints from a large roll of Gevaert Gevaluxe Velours paper from the 1930s that was given to Rossiter by the Belgian artist Pierre Cordier who, in turn, was gifted this paper by his friend, the Belgian photographer Joseph Cayet (1907 – 1987).
Manufactured briefly in Antwerp, Belgium in the 1930s, Gevaluxe Velours is widely regarded to be the best gelatin silver paper ever made. It was expensive to buy and available for less than twenty years. The unique, ground-breaking paper was described in the 1937 Gevaert catalogue with glowing praise: “Gevaluxe Velours is manufactured on an entirely new principle. Its surface has the appearance of black velvet, consisting of thousands of minute fibers, yielding prints with a depth hitherto unknown. The shadows are of a rich carbon black: the highlights clear and sparkling with a perfect rendering of gradations… It is the first photographic paper to embody an additional physical property: a three dimensional effect…”.
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Selected Works
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Installation view, Alison Rossiter: Substance of Density 1918-1948, Yossi Milo Gallery, New York
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World War II
Density 1938 - 1945Each of the assembled pieces in the Substance of Density 1918 – 1948 is made with photographic papers manufactured from the time period noted in the titles. The assemblages are composed of the rarest samples of expired papers from the artist’s archive. The expiration dates stamped on the packages of these papers pinpoint their location on a timeline, and together they form a chronology that coincides with events in world history.
For example, Density 1938 -1945 suggests the 1938 Nazi German annexation of the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia, World War II begins in 1939, the United States enters the war in 1941 in response to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, D-Day marks the Allied Normandy landings in 1944, the United States detonates the first nuclear device in Alamagordo, New Mexico in 1945 and subsequently drops atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end World War II.
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Installation view, Alison Rossiter: Substance of Density 1918-1948, Yossi Milo Gallery, New York
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Selected Works
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Installation Views
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Selected Press
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